Tracing the Growth of IMDb Reviewers in terms of Rating, Readability and Usefulness

This paper seeks to investigate how reviewers in the IMDb online community grow from novices to experts in terms of rating, readability and usefulness. Reviewers’ growth is conceptualized along two dimensions. One dimension includes three stages of the reviewer lifecycle, namely, novice, intermediate, and expert. The other dimension captures the rate of maturity. Data analysis involved both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Results indicated that reviewers in the novice stage contributed significantly higher ratings than in either the intermediate stage or the expert stage. As reviewers made the transition from novices to experts, the use of language became increasingly sophisticated, thereby taking a toll on readability. Moreover, in the novice and the intermediate stages of the reviewer lifecycle, entries submitted by slow-maturing reviewers were voted as being more useful than those contributed by fast-maturing individuals. The findings bear implications for both theory and practice.